I love music. Simple. It's always been an important part of me (and my family for that matter) and it's a piece of every single day of my life. Whether I'm singing around the house to the soundtrack in my head, just listening to iTunes or playing guitar, music makes its way into my day.
I'm most effective in development/programming when I'm listening to really good music. A while back I made a playlist in iTunes called Now This I Can Work To. It contains about 9 hours of music which typically gets me through a work day, if necessary. I also love listening to Pandora stations. So, the time has come for me to shop around for some new headphones so I thought I'd share my thoughts.
Preface
When my daughter was born last year I suddenly found myself cooped up in a hospital room with many family members around. I'm not what many refer to as a “people person” and the heightened stress of my first child being born at 28 weeks gestation really meant I didn't want to be around lots of people. Don't get me wrong. I love my family. I just like quiet. Well, I like the quiet of the absence of conversation. My wife, on the other hand, really wants many family members around when something like this occurs. So the day my daughter was born I made a trip to Walmart and bought some Sony EX earbuds, went back to the hospital and tuned out. Once my wife and I were alone again I tuned back in to everything. The earbuds have served me well the past 18 months but they just aren't good for 2+ hours of wear. I've tried all of the earbud sizes that came with the EX set but none seem to fit comfortably for long periods of time. This is a problem for someone who relies heavily on music to boost efficiency and productivity during work hours. Thus I found myself shopping for headphones.
Where to Start
I wanted to spend around $100 on whatever headphones I found. Obviously if I found some I liked for less than that I would still get them, but I didn't want to go much over the triple digit mark. I sent out a tweet looking for opinions and I received quite a few suggestions. Ultimately I narrowed my search down to three very highly rated headphones. I'm a firm believer in personal opinions and feedback which is why I go to twitter before shopping for many products. The reviews on each of the aforelinked (yes, I just made that word up) items were all great. After looking at tech specs for the products I finally landed on the Sennheiser HD-555. The retail price (at the time of this blog entry) is $169.95 and they are on Amazon for just under $100. That sounds like a fantastic deal for a great pair of headphones. Needless to say I ordered a pair last night. I look forward to getting them in the mail and rockin' out to my tunes during the day with them. Here are a few things that sold me (in no particular order):
- Brand. Sennheiser has made quality products for decades
- Numerous personal referrals
- 3m (9.8ft) cord length (nice and long)
- Appear very comfortable (and receive ratings supporting this)
- They look good!
- 1/4" jack rather than 1/8"
- Cool accessory option
I'll let you know what I think after using them for a couple of weeks. Thanks for tuning in.
Comments
Wow your office is cleverly located. For at least a few years these will only get action in fairly quiet areas so I didn’t even check to see if they were completely closed-back.
That’s interesting what you said about the AT’s cord being cloth and you having heard things in the music you hadn’t heard before. Is that attributable to the cloth aspect or some other detail in the AT’s construction? A neat thing regardless :)
The cloth is just a nice construction detail - reminded me of the older audio equipment I bought as a kid before all the modern rubber/vinyl cables came out.
These are just the highest quality headphones I’ve ever owned - and the quality shows in better quality output.
Okay, I misread your initial comment. I was really curious about this hi-tech cloth you had :)
Your Words of Wisdom
I’m sure between those three options you couldn’t miss. I can’t tell if those are completely closed-back or not. I’ve cleverly located my office next to the piano, the dehumidifier, the sump pump, the air conditioner, and under the shower and a toilet—so closed back was a requirement for me. I also got used to large closed back headphones during my years of audio and video production.
One thing was I pleased about the AT’s was the cord - it’s old-skool cloth. So far the quality has been great - have heard lots of things in the music that I never did before.
Enjoy!
Boyink on Dec 29th at 9:20 am